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Office Space

Bomb Rating:

"Office Space" is Mike Judge's attempt to alert the world that he was onto this whole "Dilbert" thing first.

I've read Dilbert in my local newspaper. I've seen the Dilbert books plastered all over bookstores. I've heard there's a new Dilbert television show. Yes, I'm aware that Mike Judge, creator of "Beavis and Butt-head" did some Dilbertesque "Milton" shorts before all that, but pal, you missed the damn boat. Scott Adams beat you to market. He took the same idea and made roughly six trillion dollars with it. Let it go, man. Let it go.

"Office Space" is Mike Judge's attempt to alert the world that he was onto this whole "Dilbert" thing first. Too little, too late. Judge, who made his fortune stringing a single syllable ("huh") into a career, apparently once walked into an actual office to pick up some bags of money, and walked out thinking he was eminently qualified to make a movie mocking the travails of the "working man." Memo from the little people, Mike: Don't ask us to pay $7 to be patronized.

Peter Gilbert's -- er, Gibbons' (Ron Livingston) -- philosophy of working is this: It sucks. As he sits at his desk at Initech, he's disrupted by eight different supervisors, including Bill Lumbert -- er, Lumbergh (Gary Cole). All they want from him, time and time again, is to fill out forms correctly, while Milbert -- er, Milton (Stephen Root) -- sits in his cubicle grunting about setting the building on fire. Peter devises a plan to steal from his company, and he gets Michael Bolton (David Herman) and Samir (Ajay Naidu) to help him. I know what you're thinking right now: Michael Bolton? I wonder how many jokes there are about that? Answer: too many.

The lone and stupid subplot involves Peter falling for disgruntled waitress Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), who works at a local restaurant. Hmmm, Jennifer Aniston as a loser waitress. Hell, why not really raise the reality factor on this pup? Kate Moss as an anal thermometer tester, Heidi Klum as a grungy janitor. Finally, Judge has this thing about hard rap music. I'm all for irony, but watching Caucasian white-collar dorks while listening to the Geto Boys' "Damn It Feels Good to Be A Gangsta" is like watching Japanese basketball.